The present invention relates to an electronic gas-lighting device integrated with a supply terminal board and so connectable directly to the wires of a supply cable.
Increasing demand for integrated components is also felt in the electric household appliance industry to simplify and speed up component assembly to the appliance, and in particular to the appliance body. In the case of gas cookers, and also built-in cooking ranges, components typically fitted to the appliance body, or to the cooking range, are the electronic gas-lighting device and the supply terminal board. The terminal board is designed to receive and retain the cable powering the various electric devices (e.g. lights, burner lighter, etc.) and, above all, to ground the appliance body and/or cooking range, which are conducting metal elements. The electronic gas-lighting device, on the other hand, is the main device to be powered, and provides for lighting the burners by means of respective high-voltage terminals, which are connected by conducting wires to electrodes fitted to the range, close to the burners which, being grounded via the range, act as counterelectrodes.
The above integration problems are known to be solved using a standard terminal board having a supporting body shaped to house a standard lighting device complete with a respective independent casing, so that the lighting device is preassembled to the terminal board, which is then fitted to the appliance in one operation. Though the time taken to fit the components to the appliance is reduced, the above solution has the drawback of increasing the time taken to assemble the components and the cost of the components themselves. Moreover, in most applications, using a standard terminal board designed for high currents (e.g. 12 amps) is a pointless waste.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an integrated device designed to eliminate the aforementioned drawbacks, and which, in particular, is cheap and easy to produce, can be assembled quickly and easily, and may be used indifferently for cooking ranges or for more complex electric household appliances such as gas cookers.
According to the present invention, there is provided an electronic gas-lighting device integrated with a terminal board, the device comprising a casing made of insulating material; electronic high-voltage-pulse generating means including at least one transformer having a secondary winding, the ends of which are connected to respective high-voltage terminals; and assembly means for removably fitting said casing to a supporting surface of a conducting metal body element of an electric household appliance; in particular a cooking range with gas burners; characterized in that said casing is fitted directly with respective supply contacts located on a specially shaped portion of the casing to form a supply terminal board, which is connected exclusively and solely to said electronic high-voltage-pulse generating means, and to which are connectable the wires of a supply cable.
More specifically, the casing is made of molded synthetic plastic material, and comprises a cup-shaped body, a cavity of which houses said at least one transformer; and a box portion, which is formed integrally with the cup-shaped body, houses at least part of said electronic high-voltage-pulse generating means, and is fitted directly with said respective supply contacts which are arranged on the box portion to form, together with the box portion, said terminal board.
The terminal board may therefore be designed solely bearing in mind the maximum current relating to the gas-lighter (less than 1 amp), thus enabling a reduction in the size of the terminal board. Moreover, all the terminal board and gas-lighter components are carried by the same casing and wired directly to one another inside the casing, which provides for component saving, reducing size and weight, simplifying assembly, and possibly also electrically connecting the terminal board contacts directly to a component, e.g. a printed circuit, of the gas-lighter.
In a preferred embodiment, the terminal board contacts, which are Faston types, are clicked onto an inner first face of the box portion, and one of them, which acts as a ground contact, has a tongue projecting outwards of the box portion and parallel to and facing a second face of the box portion opposite the first, so that the appliance body (or cooking range) can be grounded by simply fitting the tongue to it. Being parallel to the axial extension of the box portion, the tongue in no way prevents the device from being inserted into or removed from the appliance, regardless of whether this is done from the inside or outside of the appliance body.
Finally, on the second face side, the box portion of the casing comprises an integral connector for connecting the high-voltage-pulse generating means to respective control means of the appliance; and the cup-shaped body carries said high-voltage terminals housed inside through ducts formed integrally with a bottom wall of the cup-shaped body perpendicular to the first and second face of the box portion, thus preventing, in use, any possible crossover of the catenary control cables and the high-voltage cables to the burners.